


In Retrospect

by Skeren



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Dead Character Introspection, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 04:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5729224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zack wishes he were alive just to pass along what he realized about all this after he died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Retrospect

**Author's Note:**

> Written July of 2009.

There were a lot of things they never told you about SOLDIER before you got in.

Some things were top secret, like the process, the shots, the physical therapy.

Some things just didn’t come to mind once you got used to them, the eyesight, the sensory overload. Being even stronger than they think you are.

And some things... are just embarrassing. Worrying. And harder to realize than all the rest of the overlooked and unsaid details that nobody even remembered anymore.

He’d had a lot of time to look at everything since he’d died. He’d looked in on Genesis, his first real hint about this whole thing. Angeal was gone, but he had it too, and Sephiroth. Well, his consumed him.

It was obsession. Cloud was eaten by it, and even Vincent, who seemed so determined to see himself as a Turk in spite of everything that had happened to him, wasn’t immune.

He was pretty sure they’d known, the Generals. 

Angeal had focused so hard on his honor, unwavering. In a way, he was pretty sure that Angeal had considered it a safe focus. It wasn’t anything that could have been ripped away from him, it wasn’t something that annoyed others... but it still ended up killing him. 

Genesis did no better. The play that had been his inspiration had started events that had destroyed everything he’d loved. That, in turn, had destroyed things that others had loved in a ripple of violence that he’d thought he’d been safe from.

Sephiroth had turned his obsession on his friends, it being the most nebulous, most tenuous, but he’d tried, trusted... and was ripe for Jenova when she settled into the untaken niche in the man’s psyche where his loose ends and lack of direction lay exposed. In a way, Sephiroth was a victim. In others, he was a fool for not realizing that there were other ways he could have turned.

He was still conflicted about that, though he’d noticed that obsession had resettled in the man again, on Cloud this time, and it looked to be for keeps, good or ill.

Cloud didn’t help. His obsession was so much like Sephiroth’s that it sometimes hurt to watch over him. He focused on Sephiroth when the man was alive, then when he was gone he was adrift. He’d tried to help, hell, Aeris had tried, but he focused so hard... If he’d just let go and find something new, he would be alright, but he didn’t. He was like Vincent like that, he didn’t want to let go of the dead. And much like Vincent’s situation, Cloud’s dead kept cropping back up.

So he wasn’t helping either, but he could blame that on his _own_ obsession. He didn’t want to let go of his last friend, the last person he really had to _protect_. He’d needed someone to protect since he stopped needing someone to follow. He’d still yearned after Angeal, right up to the end, but he’d stopped focusing on him, started focusing on other things. Then he’d died, and it had all... made sense.

It was a stupid, stupid SOLDIER trait.

It didn’t matter that he knew it now. It didn’t help Cloud or make him realize that it wasn’t just _him_. It didn’t make anything better for the ones left that had no contact with each other who were slowly going crazy, or were so focused in on their obsessions that they were dropping off over them. The ones that had family were okay, mostly, the book lovers and the collectors, but not everyone.

And there was really nothing he could do. He left hints... but he was dead.

The dead had their own rules, and even obsessions made them stay within them.

Even _Sephiroth_ had learned that.

He would eventually too.


End file.
